"This is a book full of heart and intelligence, rich with humor and emotion, no punches pulled. Honoring the past, it turns our faces finally toward a future—hopefully—of change and growth in Jewish life." —Alicia Ostriker, author, Nakedness of the Fathers and The Little Space: Selected and New Poems"Merle Feld captures the feelings, frustrations, and hopes of a generation of American Jewish women, and her words will forever be the anthem, the emblem, of the late-twentieth-century Jewish feminist movement."— Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, editor and translator of Out of the Depths I Call to You: A Book of Prayers for the Married Jewish Woman"This book cannot be pigeonholed—it evokes recognition and assent in relation to the complex experiences of being a child, being a child dealing with aging parents, being a friend and a lover, being a mother, being a (Jewish) woman at the end of the twentieth century, being a human being seeking a spiritual life. In describing her effort to live a spiritually meaningful life and to find spirituality in everyday experience, Feld names experiences shared by many women, yet seldom fully articulated, or articulated this clearly and well." — Judith Plaskow, author of Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective"You stop by Merle's house one morning. You have a cup of coffee with her at the kitchen table. She tells you a few of her stories. You look at your watch: it's late afternoon. Or, she brings out a poem she just finished. Your eyes fill with tears; it's Yom Kippur. Stories and poetry so captivating, powerful, wise, you will never be the same. An extraordinary achievement!" — Lawrence Kushner, author of Invisible Lines of Connection"Merle Feld speaks honestly about the lives of all women in this deep and penetrating volume. A Spiritual Life is a delight to the mind and the heart." — Sharon Strassfeld, author of Everything I Know and coeditor of The Second Jewish Catalog: Sources and Resources"Feld breaks new ground in spiritual autobiography—locating spiritual growth in the daily life of a daughter, wife, mother, and friend. Her distinctive voice is characterized by a simplicity and honest humility that makes the profundity of her insights all the more startling. She has a gift for making that which may seem esoteric, accessible; and that which may seem ordinary or mundane, transcendent. This book is one of a kind." — Gail Twersky Reimer, Director,Jewish Women's Archive, and coeditor of Reading Ruth: Contemporary Women Reclaim a Sacred Story"Interweaving poems with personal reflections, Merle Feld takes the reader on a spiritual journey through well-known paths not often associated with the sacred. In search of a meaningful Jewish self-identity, she draws on her own experiences as wife, mother, and Jewishly-committed feminist, transforming everyday events into occasions for spontaneous prayer. Feld's honest, sometimes irreverent poems are witty, wise, and religiously insightful. Worthy of a wide audience, this book should be of particular interest to feminist theologians and historians; to Jewish women who, like Feld, struggle to find their place in the Jewish world; and to anyone seeking new paths towards the holy." — Ellen Umansky, coeditor of Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality: A Sourcebook"Feld gives voice to a generation of American Jewish women." — Rabbi Jane Litman, coeditor of Lifecycles Vol. 2: Jewish Women on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Life
Feld, an award-winning playwright and poet, weaves a memoir from poetry, narrative, meditation, and social history, exploring the complex facets of a Jewish woman's coming of age. She captures the emotional and spiritual reality of contemporary Jews as well as religious seekers of all types. Overarching accounts of life transitions is a vision of the Jewish calendar year as a source of sustenance for the author's deepening spiritual expression. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
